Tandoori Shrimp

A wedding gift we got last year, my grill pan has seen many an attempt at mimicking the real thing—a charcoal grill. Since I can’t grill to save my life, I thought the grill pan would help out. If you’re unaware, a grill pan is just a pan with ribs that you place on your stovetop.

My problem comes when trying to get a good char without burning or undercooking the meat. I’ve found that chicken & shrimp have given me the most ease on the grill pan, where things like steak and burgers take a bit more effort.

I guess I should also mention I almost burned my apartment down using my grill pan the other day.

I was heating up the pan to grill some steaks, turned my back for a few seconds, and WHOOSH! Fire. It wasn’t actually the pan that went up in flames. The burner below it had a stray piece of Chex cereal (thanks holiday chex mix spree) that had caught fire. Oops.

If anyone has any tips or tricks about using grill pans—or about not starting a kitchen fire—PLEASE let me know! I love mine but have trouble with certain things…especially cleaning those suckers. It’s hard to scrape off the little leftover bits from in between the ribs.

I mentioned shrimp has been the easiest to cook on the grill pan. That’s probably because it takes no time to cook shrimp. I had some leftover skewers from when I made turkey kabobs a few months ago so I thought I would do a shrimp kabob. Garam masala was in my cabinet and an idea was born: Tandoori shrimp!

From Wikipedia:

Tandoori chicken is a chicken dish prepared by roasting chicken marinated in yoghurt and spices in a tandoor, a cylindrical clay oven. The dish originated from the Indian subcontinent and is popular in many other parts of the world.

I don’t have a cylindrical clay oven, so this recipe is a more Westernized version of the real thing. You still get all of the good spiciness from the turmeric and garam masala, and I added red food coloring to give it that traditional red tint. There’s also a mild sweetness from marinating the shrimp in yogurt and lime juice.

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Published by Colleen

I'm a photojournalist for a local television station in OKC and love to cook (obviously). I'm four years removed from college (BA in Mass Communication) and I'm just trying to guide through my mid-twenties with a relative ease. We'll see how this goes!
View all posts by Colleen

4 thoughts on “Tandoori Shrimp”

I have two of these grill pans – one non-stick and the other cast iron. Hate them both. If you have your ventilation on, especially, the pans just can’t get hot enough without setting off your smoke alarms. I have a blog post coming up on how to sear meat, and it doesn’t involve a pan.